By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

Book Information

Mediated Discourse sets out a discursive theory of human action. Language and action are intimately related. The difficult question to answer is how they are related. Mediated Discourse Theory looks into social relationships to see how the use of language is both a form of action in itself and is also indirectly related to all other forms of human action. Through the empirical study of a one-year-old child learning to exchange objects with caregivers, Scollon challenges the claim that all practices are represented in discourse and that all discourse has the function of structuring practice.
1. Mediated Discourse: A Discursive Theory of Human Action
2. On the Ontogenesis of a Social Practice
3. On the Ontogenesis of a Social Actor: From Object to
Agency in Baby Talk
4. Objects as Mediational Means: The Crayon Appropriates a
Child
5. The Nexus of Practice
6. Mediated Discourse as a Nexus of Practice